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Wrestlers are trash "Allegedly"


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1 hour ago, RunningFromAmerica said:

Mike Tyson is an interesting case. I don't think there's another obvious example of someone convicted of rape really being rehabilitated in terms of remaining a celebrity. Rightly or wrongly, a lot of people were never really convinced of his guilt - but nonetheless he is a convicted rapist and I'm not sure AEW can really feature him again if they were ever planning to.

If nothing else, Tyson paid his debt to society, and while that isn't a magic get-out-of-cancellation-free card, I'd be more receptive to someone who was caught and paid the price for his actions, over someone who's been skating on the brother brother efforts of his community for however long.

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On 6/19/2020 at 7:05 AM, The Comedian said:

Well if a guy with a "bro" gimmick turns out to be scummy, I can't say I'm surprised...

Never understood how a "bro" gimmick was supposed to make him a babyface anyway. Like, I think of bros, I think of 22-year-olds who don't know how to drink going to the local chain bar wearing Hollister t-shirts two sizes too small so their arms look bigger and getting wasted off Fireball shots until they start picking fights and get tossed out. Who wants to root for that?

When I was in my thirties I had a lot of fun throwing guys like that into the street... ?

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41 minutes ago, Super Ape said:

If nothing else, Tyson paid his debt to society, and while that isn't a magic get-out-of-cancellation-free card, I'd be more receptive to someone who was caught and paid the price for his actions, over someone who's been skating on the brother brother efforts of his community for however long.

But it's not like Tyson admitted wrongdoing and went to prison voluntarily. He fought the charges in court. The fact that he served his time doesn't tell us anything about what kind of person he was or is.

(Not trying to start an argument or be hostile, just registering polite disagreement.)

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24 minutes ago, Super Ape said:

If nothing else, Tyson paid his debt to society, and while that isn't a magic get-out-of-cancellation-free card, I'd be more receptive to someone who was caught and paid the price for his actions, over someone who's been skating on the brother brother efforts of his community for however long.

 

2 minutes ago, MapRef41N93W said:

But it's not like Tyson admitted wrongdoing and went to prison voluntarily. He fought the charges in court. The fact that he served his time doesn't tell us anything about what kind of person he was or is.

(Not trying to start an argument or be hostile, just registering polite disagreement.)

I watched the entire Tyson vs. McNeeley PPV broadcast about a month ago now because there was absolutely no live boxing going at the time. With the way that broadcast was handled, you would think Mike Tyson was coming back from a serious health scare and not a prison stint. There were so many A-list celebrities there that you would think it was for the undisputed heavyweight title and not a fight with a rusty Mike Tyson vs. some club fighter chump. In two months from now, that fight will be exactly twenty five years old.

After the fight, you got a super melancholy Mike Tyson speaking in dulcet tones about being happy to be back. If Tyson had stayed on the straight and narrow from there and not spent the next five or six years self destructing, you would never, ever hear about the 1992 rape conviction. I mean as is, it was used to sell Tyson as a menace to society, that on his PPVs anything can happen, and give fodder to the media. However, you have to juxtapose that with the return of Ali after his forced hiatus in 1967. He fought Jerry Quarry and Oscar Bonavena and then had the "Fight of the Century" against Frazier in March 1971. The last fight is an example of when a guy who was portrayed as a despised shitheel now turning super babyface. I don't say that just because sheer crowd support, but the super weirdness of during and after the fight where Don Dunphy, Archie Moore, and BURT FUCKING LANCASTER are on closed circuit commentary basically cheering on Ali and just glad he's back despite Joe Frazier left hooking this man into oblivion. The sentiment on Ali went from possibly anti-white venomous NOI member & draft dodging troublemaker (and to be fair, the latter was weakened by the tide turning on Vietnam as time passed) to "oh shit, I cannot believe we were robbed of three and a half years of this man". That mirrors Tyson's return in 1995. No matter the seriousness of the crime, people felt like they were robbed of four and a half years of Mike Tyson. He had so many rebirths and reinventions in the twenty five years since then and almost thirty years since the actual crime he was convicted of that if you use Tyson for anything, it's a tacit admission that his wrongdoing has been forgiven. I'm not arguing whether that's right or wrong, but if you're going to shun someone for using him, you better start in the summer of 1995. It's not like we've changed our mind on rape being wrong in twenty-five years. Yes, we've had a serious movements within the last three or four years that give us new perspectives. However, a couple of those dealt with those who were never punished to begin with and using influence, wealth, and power to skirt said punishment. With Tyson, unless he does something now that bounces him into the court of public opinion or in prison again, he's bulletproof because the media has made it so.

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14 hours ago, RunningFromAmerica said:

If Ospreay's a good guy, there's probably too many good guys around.

I'll say something personal though.......I don't think I've done anything that wasn't 'in the game' as it were, nothing remotely approaching a 'grey rape' - but I'm not going to call myself a good guy. There, I said it.

To be fair, whether you’re a good guy or not, it’s not up to good guys and allies to call themself such. 

4 hours ago, dokdoyle said:

I know in a lot of the buildings that we ran when I was ring announcing, they weren't built for events like this so the "locker room" may be a meeting room/lounge. If we were in a hockey rink ; we would have access to all the dressing rooms.

I’ve never been involved in indie wrestling, but if locker rooms are so makeshift, it seems like it shouldn’t be that hard to make up a little more space for privacy.

Edited by JonnyLaw
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1 hour ago, OSJ said:

When I was in my thirties I had a lot of fun throwing guys like that into the street... ?

I want to see you try and throw Matt Riddle out of a bar, um, now or time transported from then. ?

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2 hours ago, Super Ape said:

If nothing else, Tyson paid his debt to society, and while that isn't a magic get-out-of-cancellation-free card, I'd be more receptive to someone who was caught and paid the price for his actions, over someone who's been skating on the brother brother efforts of his community for however long.

Honestly, even with things like Tyson, that probably is another reason why "deny and attack" has taken hold over "admit wrongdoing and try to do better. Even if Tyson is a question, a better example would be Michael Vick: A person who was caught, paid the price for his actions, and his punishment truly changed him and made him do a complete 180 to a person who does tireless work for the Humane Society to try and prevent others from getting into dogfighting like he did....and to many people, it doesn't matter how much he changes. No matter what he does to change it, he'll always be "the guy who engaged in dogfighting." Even if he changed his life, to a lot of people, his very worst moment is who he is in the dark. It's all that Vick is, and more important, it's all that he ever WILL BE.

With things like that in mind, eventually it goes to "deny and attack" ends up the endgame simply because: Once the mere accusation comes out, whether it gets legs, gets forgotten, gets proven false, you get exonerated for it, a big voice comes down and says "HE DIDN'T DO IT!"...a lot of people are going to hate you forever for it anyway. With that in play, eventually the only way to do it is realize "A lot of people will hate you forever for this, bending the knee proves you did it...best to just deny, fight it, and if you're going down no matter what at least go down swinging."

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2 hours ago, Nice Guy Eddie said:

Same here. What's causing all this? Woooooo

David Starr applied for Unemployment Benefit in the UK, was turned down (due to not being a UK citizen) and chose to return to the United States to see if he could get welfare there. And while he was away, his girlfriend realised he'd been gaslighting her the whole time, and contacted his exes to see if hers was an isolated case. Then, Mad Kurt (in character) said tweeted OK Boomer to Nathan Cruz, and Mikey Whiplash  accused Kurt of cyberbullying and compared himself to Hana Kimura. Which annoyed everyone who ever encountered Whiplash, because he's an IRL bully (amongst other things).

So when Starr's ex started talking about how he's a manipulative rapist, Mikey Whiplash's victims spoke up too, and that opened the floodgates. Which is odd, because when Rory Gulak and Gentleman Jervis (or possibly an identity thief posing as him) were exposed as sex pests, the floodgates stayed closed.

Considering how WWE likes to rewrite history, I can't wait to hear next year's version of the early days of NXT UK. How Pete Dunne formed a group called British Strong Style consisted solely of himself, and entered a 16 man tournament in which he and Mark Andrews were the only entrants.

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24 minutes ago, Curt McGirt said:

Re: Tyson/Ali

In short, if you make enough money for enough people (or just for yourself), anything can go away. 

Problem with that statement is that hasn't worked for so many people. You think Netflix didn't want Spacey for what ended up being the final season of a show that help put Netflix on the map? There wasn't enough money in the world to get him out of that shit.

I was saying that Tyson went to prison and there was the absence makes the heart grow fonder sentiment afterwards that didn't last long because his life turned into a three ring circus again much like it was pre-prison during his short, tumultuous relationship with Robin Givens (and her mother essentially), his management issues, various training changes and problems, and underlying tension with Don King. In that way it's much like what we had with Michael Jackson in some ways. Hell, Kobe or Tiger Woods are better examples. We've seen Mike Tyson since he was 18 or 19 years old. When he got in trouble, he was twenty-five. Nobody views Tyson as what he was when he was thirty-five let alone when he was twenty-five. Moreover, the fact that he did "pay his debt to society" gives everyone in entertainment (whether it's a Jimmy Kimmel or some sports talk show) an out if you demand he be taken off the airwaves. So is the expectation we convict him again for what he already served hard time for? I mean we hound other people to go to prison or whathaveyou, but what's the expectation when they get out? Shit, we've already had movements to allow ex felons to vote (and part of that rightly was confronting voter suppression in the African-American community). So these people can vote...but they shouldn't be on television, a medium anyone can appear now thanks to reality and competition shows? If the answer is they shouldn't, then that's more of a moral discussion of whether or not people think solitary confinement or imprisonment is for rehabilitation or just to see people suffer. I grew up in the shadow of Parchman prison in Mississippi, which basically started off as a slave plantation post-chattel slavery at the turn of the century and basically stayed that way. It wasn't until very, very recently until people saw the inhumane conditions people were living in. That's not to say feel sorry for hardened criminals as much as prisons ideally shouldn't be concentration camps. With that said, once a person gets out, the whole thing is NOT being exiled from society cause that's what prison is for.

Yes, Tyson was rewarded with gigantic purses after that and probably too welcomed back with open arms, but so much has happened since then with Tyson that everything from a certain point has been pushed to the background. I was watching an old fight of his (I think it was the Pinklon Thomas fight) where there is five or six minute piece showing Mike volunteering at a school for the physically and intellectually disabled. It's insane because inside of a year and half, Mike Tyson is embroiled in the shit with Robin Givens. From then on, it's no let up in his life until he disappears from public view for a few years. All that stuff may as well have taken place in 1887 than 1987 because no one is going to remember that. If you were born in 1996 or 1997, you have no earthly clue about who Mike Tyson was prior to the goddamn Lou Savarese post fight interview talking about eating children, being cut from the same cloth as Jack Dempsey and Sonny Liston, and comparing himself to Alexander to Great. That is the throughline for Mike Tyson for A LOT of people. That and KO compilations on Youtube. So when you tell someone who comes from a younger generation that he went to prison, their reaction is not "what did he go for" but "yeah, I can believe that". He's a real life mythical figure as much as a celebrity. The ratings for The Last Dance shows people aren't willing to give up that obsession. Therefore, Mike Tyson will be around in some fashion or another.

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9 minutes ago, odessasteps said:

It's called the Tyson Zone for a reason. ?

If that movie with Jamie Foxx isn't as long as a goddamn Ken Burns doc, I'm going to be disappointed. 

Edited by Elsalvajeloco
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3 minutes ago, RunningFromAmerica said:

Re: Tyson. Yeah, there's a lot of complex moral issues here. I think rehabilitation has got to be possible and time has passed. But I still think AEW will need to drop anything they have with him. We will see I guess.

Not to play devil's advocate here, but if this movement wouldn't have happened would this have been an issue regarding him? It seemed like people were more on him about being a semi-washed up athlete.

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I definitely thought it jarred with their 'progressiveness' though it's complex as many ppl see him as effectively a victim of marginalisation - Chuck D called him a political prisoner.

But whether you can say 'we're cleaning up this business and now here's convicted rapist Mike Tyson'....well it's wrestling, anything is possible.

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8 minutes ago, RunningFromAmerica said:

I definitely thought it jarred with their 'progressiveness' though it's complex as many ppl see him as effectively a victim of marginalisation - Chuck D called him a political prisoner.

But whether you can say 'we're cleaning up this business and now here's convicted rapist Mike Tyson'....well it's wrestling, anything is possible.

Who has been more problematic recently: Mike Tyson or Jake Roberts?

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If this dragnet expands from rape to domestic violence, then that'll be another strike on Tyson (Tyson has admitted punching Robin Givens), and a strike on Stone Cold Steve Austin (Debra).

Tyson's reputation makeover is pretty remarkable in the scheme of things. It's sort of the power of people seeing Tyson as being victimized financially by Don King and also the power of belief. Meaning there's probably some entertainment industry people who don't mind hanging out with Mike Tyson because he's Mike Tyson.

The entertainment field is a weird one, since we get stuff like Ice Cube as a family movie star that occasionally goes off on Twitter praising Louis Farrakhan (which Cube was doing in the early 90s as well).. basically you don't lose work if you're an asshole with some sort of talent that isn't in obvious legal trouble at the moment.

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